Shows how desperate the Russian side is if they're willing to sacrifice such highly skilled individuals in a regular infantry assault. They are running out of manpower for their campaign.

The guy seems like a career specialist based on the article. Lots of regular conscripts have tried to surrender or run away but this guy fought in Russian proxy wars long before the Ukraine conflict. So he's not the type to disobey an order like this.

Sadly he'll likely be able to assert a first amendment defense, so nothing will happen. One can always hope, though...

The difference is of course obvious to anyone who's not knee deep in MAGA. (Hint: being a threat to democracy can unfortunately invite this sort of thing).

Still, really? This is what political discourse has come to lately? I mean, what the ...

From Meltdown to gagdown.

But I'd add - if someone could draft this up and show me a working prototype, I might be easier to convince. It's a lot easier to think about something when you can play with an idea.

I mean sure…but essentially you’re using the facts as they stand as justification that it will never work

More or less.

when my whole point is that these facts as they stand need to change because they will never work unless we change them.

I think to make that argument you'd have to first argue that this works elsewhere. But we see warnings like this, https://web.archive.org/web/20221104001618/https://old.reddit.com/r/TaylorSwift/comments/yljj15/swifties_be_warned_that_this_is_a_fake_account/ or like this, https://www.instagram.com/czaronline/p/CvAts_9MFDf/

then I'm not at all convinced that this is the case.

You can tweet at celebrities, and you can follow celebrities on instagram, and all the other services, but you generally can’t email them.

Perhaps it's a generational thing? Back in the day you could. Bill Gates used to be reachable at bill.gates@microsoft.com and Jeff Bozos at jeff@amazon.com

On the flip side, just because a celebrity has a handle on a particular social media service doesn't guarantee you can reach them. Taylor Swift has a tumblr but she hasn't publicly used it in years.

People keep using email, and domains as reasons for why it’s not an issue, but there’s a reason celebrities aren’t known for their email.

What's the reason? Two things come to my mind: first, Bill Gates supposedly said he had an entire team whose job was just to read and respond to his public email.

Second, email is direct contact, like a DM rather than a tweet (that everyone sees). The email equivalent would be a mailing list. If you want that, you can join Taylor Swift's mailing list over at https://www.taylorswift.com/#mailing-list

you wouldn’t want a second abff08f4813c to exist.

I wouldn't mind that much, tbh. Though considering the username in question, it's very unlikely.

Even if you don’t use tiktok, you would want to make sure nobody else has the name abff08f4813c on tiktok.

Much harder with a name like Taylor Swift. How many other people have the same name? Even on twitter there's a different taylorswift - so the famous singer is taylorswift13 there.

now suddenly 300 more abff08f4813c on 300 different instances all pop up.

My username is probably the wrong one to use for this example.

But more generally - does anyone want to be taylorswift@hotmail.com and taylorswift@gmail.com and taylorswift@outlook.com and taylorswift@yahoo.com all at once? (Well, okay, yes there probably is someone who wants that, with bad intentions, but practically speaking it's kinda obvious that these aren't all official email accounts by the singer.)

Because if you try to sue one person on one other instance that has abff08f4813c,

But Taylor Swift may not be able to sue the other person - she's not the only one named Taylor Swift after all.

What I’m suggesting is, no matter which instance you’re on, if you search abff08f4813c, the search should find that username, and direct you to the profile that corrilates with you. And even though that profile is only on one instance, it would make it so if I tried to make abff08f4813c, on another instance, I would be told that username is already taken.

And then someone tries to be abffo8f4813c or abff08f48i3c.

I don’t see any celebrity who values their own brand on an international scale, be willing to publically announce they are on the fediverse,

uh ... https://joinfediverse.wiki/Notable_Fediverse_accounts

and their fans can migrate to the fediverse to follow them.

I mean, there's no accounting for the fans, sure. If anything, celebs seek out platforms that have lots of people to connect them with fans, rather than them bring fans to a platform, I'd guess.

From there, you could absolutely create an old twitter style verification system.

Sure, but it's not a required step.

Mastodon.social could implement a mimic of the old twitter style verification system for folks who join that particular instance - and those joining another instance simply wouldn't have the guarantee.

And then threads can implement the verification system for folks joining directly through threads - and again those joined on another instance simply wouldn't have the guarantee.

And then Bluesky can ...

I don't really see anyone but a commercial company even trying to do this - it'd be a headache - and probably expensive - in terms of the requirements to protect the data used (such as identify card verification).

Unfortunately and with deep regrets, I think it'd be tough. From https://lipskylowe.com/when-are-false-accusations-of-racism-defamation/ there are four points:

False Statement about the target was stated as fact (not opinion)
Publication or communication of that statement to a third person
Fault on the part of the person making the statement amounting at least to negligence
Harm to the subject of the statement (damages)

Considering how hard he's publicly pushed the story as a true fact, I think prongs 1 and 2 have been met. Alas, I can see 3 being not reached (he checked with his constituents who claimed the story was true and a judge accepts that as sufficient due diligence).

And 4 would be the hardest - how does one prove damages (like a dollar amount) and that they were specifically caused by his comments?

This is outrageous. Wonder if there are any grounds for a lawsuit - if that route is possible, then I'd expect the union to get their *** handed to them at the end of it.

This. Exactly this.

Conservatives got what they deserved, eh?

Yes, people forget that not every founding father was Christian. Ben Franklin was a deist, as per his autobiography, for example.